Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-01-04 20:42:22 - Graham Ellis
Have you ever looked for a pattern in the roads where you live? Where to you end up if you turn alternately left, and right, and left, and right? Such is my mind that at times in the past (and now too, it seems!) I wonder about such things.
Out or our gate, right, left, right, left, right, left and I'll end up at the "bus gate" on the old A350 (Semington Road) right next door to the Police Divisional HQ where, I am told on the best of authority, they turn the camera on the bus gate at quiet times and catch a few motorists. I think I'll give the trip a miss.
I went "round the block" this evening. Yesterday after dark it was fearsomely cold and we had trouble starting the car (OK - *both* cars - how unlucky can you get?) so I wanted to get at least one running today and, having coaxed some life into Lisa's, I took it round the block. Doesn't sound very far, does it?
If you go our of our cul-de-sac and turn left, and left again, and ... keep turning left (but skipping all the dead ends), you soon realise just how much we are in the country ... several miles later, and I was still on the A365 Devizes Road and in Sells Green. Where I did NOT stop at The Three Magpies - always tempting, but I'm always going somewhere when I pass. And - at last - a left turn!
The sideroad leads over the track of the old Holt to Devizes Railway as the site, in a long-filled cutting, of Bromham and Rowde Halt. Although the station was in Sell's Green, such was the expected traffic from these other places - both several miles away - that the station was named after them.
Bromham is a s-p-r-e-a-d o-u-t village ... a pocket of rich soil and you'll find vegetable fields surrounding the village where other villages and towns in the area have fields of wheat and grass. It's so characteristic of the one place that you could drop me on a corner that I didn't know and I could say "this is Bromham". View stretch from Bromham to the flank of the Marlborough Downs - illustrated
An so onto the A3102 and back down Sandridge Hill, through Sandridge and in to Melksham at The Foresters. Another lovely, late afternoon run (though it was getting a little dark for pictures, so I'll admit to you that these are all images from my library today!
And so down Queensway, past the corner of Cowslip Mews (where I often wonder about the Cow's lip, and why they didn't call it Pigstail Close!), along Spa Road and into the Spa. Even on a day which is so brutal cold that even the cars didn't want to go out, we still live in a lovely county.
If you go our of our cul-de-sac and turn left, and left again, and ... keep turning left (but skipping all the dead ends), you soon realise just how much we are in the country ... several miles later, and I was still on the A365 Devizes Road and in Sells Green. Where I did NOT stop at The Three Magpies - always tempting, but I'm always going somewhere when I pass. And - at last - a left turn!
Bromham is a s-p-r-e-a-d o-u-t village ... a pocket of rich soil and you'll find vegetable fields surrounding the village where other villages and towns in the area have fields of wheat and grass. It's so characteristic of the one place that you could drop me on a corner that I didn't know and I could say "this is Bromham". View stretch from Bromham to the flank of the Marlborough Downs - illustrated
An so onto the A3102 and back down Sandridge Hill, through Sandridge and in to Melksham at The Foresters. Another lovely, late afternoon run (though it was getting a little dark for pictures, so I'll admit to you that these are all images from my library today!